The Way Home
by The Lillie
Summary: Upon encountering a comatose Beatrice in the hospital, Wirt returns to the Unknown to try to bring her home; but his journey is threatened when he discovers that the Beast has returned, with a new personality and a new lantern bearer.
1. Prologue

_Falling. Screaming. Fighting. Darkness._

 _All I can remember._

 _I am tumbling through an endless black, no sight of escape anywhere. I don't know where I would escape to if I could. I don't know where I am or where I came from or where I'm falling to. I don't know why I'm screaming or who I'm fighting. I don't even know who I am. All I know is this eternal descent, this eternal shriek, this eternal struggle._

 _Spinning. Crashing. Clawing._

 _Rage and fear and desperation._

 _Then I feel a tug. And I'm falling not down, but sideways._

 _And I see a light._

 _And I hear a voice._

"...Legface McCullen, Artichoke, Penguin P. Steve - but I think the very worst name for this frog is - "

 _Name._

 _Face_.

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

 _I clutch at the light. A border separates me from it. A border is keeping me from reaching the world of life from this world of nothingness._

 _I claw at the border. I rip a hole through it._

 _I can return to the world._

 _I can survive._

 _I throw my enemy off and tear through the border._

The children he had seen are nowhere in sight now; he's fallen through into a different part of the woods. A woman gasps and whirls around at the sound of his arrival, blonde hair flying as she turns.

"Who's there?" she cries out.

He exhales. Loudly. He hasn't breathed in a very, very long time.

He's escaped the void.

It's still dark - the woman can't see him. But he can see her. He recognizes her, in some part of his slowly returning memory, but can't tell exactly who she is.

It doesn't matter who she is.

He's back in the real world.

He can feel his arms. Legs. Fingers. Toes. Head. Neck. Torso. He has a body. He has an identity.

He rolls onto his back. He's lying on cold, wet grass. The air is chill with the bite of autumn.

He exhales again. The breath turns into a moan. The moan turns into a laugh.

"Who's there?" the woman shouts again. "Show yourself!"

He laughs harder. Louder. Higher. Ecstatic, triumphant, insane. His back arches against the ground. He rises to his knees and laughs at the trees, laughs to the sky above him. He's scaring the woman, but he doesn't care.

There's a flash of light - the woman has lit a match. The tiny flame waves around, searching in vain for him. He stands, enshadowed. His laughter has worn out its welcome, and he is silent now. He watches the woman for a moment, then loses interest.

He can feel the void trying to pull him back. He won't survive long in this world - at least, not alone. He needs something to tie him down to this world. He needs something to keep him alive until he can return to his full strength.

The woman's light grows. She's lit a lantern that she found on the ground.

She shines the lantern right on him.

He shies away at first. Then he relaxes, and lets her see him in full.

She gasps, her hand on her heart, tears in her eyes, a smile on her lips.

"Light," she says. "I knew you'd come for me."

He knows who she is now.

He knows who he is now.

He knows how he will survive in this world.

He grins.

 _I will be the god of the new world._


	2. Memories

"We're going to the pasture to meet Adelaide and ask 'er if she knows the way to get us back where - "

"Greg, could you not sing that song?" Wirt asked, cutting his brother off. "It's kinda making me nervous."

"Why would a song make you nervous?" his mom scoffed.

Thomas paused and lifted Greg onto his shoulders, causing the boy to giggle. It seemed giggling had been Greg's default state since waking up in the hospital the night before; every waking moment, if not spent singing, was spent giggling.

Wirt, on the other hand, had barely done anything but think.

"I bet Wirt feels threatened," Thomas grinned. "He's jealous of his little brother's mad lyricizing skills."

"No, I just - " Actually, he was a little jealous of how Greg had ingeniously thought to rhyme "pasture" with "ask her", but the real source of his uneasiness was: "We don't want to visit Adelaide anymore. Remember? The strings and the creepiness - "

"Oh, ye-a-h," Greg recalled, putting on a serious expression. "Hmm...well, I have this great tune. I should think up new words for it! Ohhh, we're going to our home to see - "

" - if Sara li-ikes Wirt!" their mother improvised, nudging Wirt with her shoulder.

Wirt's cheeks immediately flamed pink. "Mom!"

"No, 'Wirt' doesn't rhyme with 'home'," Greg said, unfazed by Wirt's embarrassment. "Mom, Dad, help me think of what rhymes with 'home'!"

"We're going to our home to hook the bee up with the gnome - "

"Stop it! I'm not even a gnome anyway, my costume's supposed - "

His protest was interrupted by a short yelp; he quickly caught himself before he tripped.

"Uh, hold on, my shoe's untied," he said, crouching down to amend the issue. "You guys go on ahead, I'll catch up."

"If you're longer than two minutes, we're driving away without ya," his mother replied jokingly.

As it turned out, his shoe wasn't actually untied, but somehow the laces had shifted so far to the side that the left hung much longer than the right. He would have to unlace and relace the entire shoe. Sighing, he settled into a more comfortable position and began the laborious process.

Dang Greg. He'd gotten the "Adelaide Parade" song stuck in Wirt's head. Wirt absentmindedly hummed the opening bars as he threaded the aglet through the eyelets.

"We don't know who she is or how she is or when or what she is - " he muttered.

They knew what she was now. A creepy, spidery old lady who'd tried to turn them into her slaves.

The shoelace jumped up and wound itself around his wrist.

"Aah!" he cried, scrambling backwards.

String, yarn, rope, webs, tangling around his wrists and ankles, wrapping around his neck and torso, trapping, tugging, strangling. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. Fear, rage, shock. Hurt, loneliness, despair. Beatrice had betrayed them.

Then the bite of a cold night wind, the stench of rotting flesh as smoke filled his nostrils. Adelaide's face dripping, melting. And he crawled toward the scissors, reached, cut himself free.

But he held no scissors now. The string wrapped tighter, tighter, tighter - smoke, smoke, smoke - Beatrice had betrayed them -

Wirt opened his eyes. There was no smoke, no Adelaide, no Beatrice. He was just sitting on his rump on the floor of the hospital hallway, freaking out over nothing. As usual.

He shook the shoelace off his hand.

Even though it was only the next morning after leaving the Wood, it wasn't the first time he'd had a flashback and freaked. A kid's dog walking outside had barked, and he was suddenly being chased by the monster that had destroyed the Woodsman's mill. A bell rang, and he was about to be eaten by Lorna's evil spirit. Thomas came by to sing Greg a lullaby, and he swore he heard the song of the Beast.

Maybe he just needed to cancel them out with some good flashbacks. After all, they'd defeated the Beast, and the spirit, and the monster had turned out to just be a dog. And Beatrice had come back for them in the end.

And then, in the end, they had to leave her.

And probably wouldn't ever see her again.

Wirt shook his head and focused on lacing up his shoe. _Happy thoughts._

"Oh, potatoes and molasses," he hummed, a smile inching at the corner of his mouth. "If you want some, oh, just ask us - "

" - they're warm and soft like puppies and socks - "

Wirt looked up. Did he just hear someone singing along with him?

"Filled with cream and candy rocks?" he tentatively finished.

The someone kept singing along with him, but didn't continue past the ending line.

"Greg?" Wirt called - his little brother was the only other person in this world who knew the song. But the voice didn't sound a bit like Greg's.

In fact, the voice sounded more like…

His shoe tied, Wirt stood up, glancing around in confusion. A few rooms down the hall, a door was slightly ajar. He cautiously stepped toward it, wordlessly humming the second verse. The voice was definitely coming from this room.

"They're shiny and large like a fisherman's barge…" he sang.

"...you'll know you've had enough...when you start seeing stars…"

Wirt stared at the girl.

Her red hair was spread tiredly over the blank white pillow of the hospital bed. Her skin was pale and papery, but he could make out a smattering of faded freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were closed, her body limp, her mouth barely moving - just enough to form the shapes of the syllables of the song. One thin wrist was circled by a band, the other pierced with an IV.

He stepped closer, hesitant but curious. The girl's wristband read BEATRICE MILLS.

 _But how…?_

"Wirt? Where'd you go? I was just kidding about leaving without you - "

"Um, c-coming." Wirt hopped backwards, trying to keep his eyes on the girl while still heeding his mother. He slipped out of the room and walked down the hallway; his mother was waiting for him at the end.

"What were you doing in there?" his mom asked, peering at the still-open door.

Wirt shrugged and quickly thought up a little lie. "I thought I saw something weird in there, but the room was empty."

"Weird. Hey, do you wanna drive home, Mr. Brand-New Driver's License?"

She dangled the keys over his hand. Wirt smiled and took them.


	3. Realization

**beatirce mills |**

In his haste, he'd mistyped. Wirt hurriedly corrected the mistake and hit 'enter', a little bit more forceful than necessary. After a second, the results appeared - none of them even close to what he was looking for. There was a countess from the 1920s, a daughter of a pop star, and a few Facebook profiles; not one of them matched the red-haired girl from the hospital.

Biting his lip, Wirt leaned back in his chair. How to clarify his search…?

He furrowed his brow and added:

 **beatrice mills coma |**

Enter.

But then he pouted. Same pop star, same Facebook profiles. Maybe if he included his town name?

"Wirt-o! Come downstairs, please!"

He didn't look up from the keyboard. "Uh, okay, Mom, I'll be right there - "

"Hurry! I have a time-sensitive favor to ask of thee!"

Wirt hesitated. He didn't know exactly why his mom chose to talk weird like that sometimes, but somehow it always added a sense of urgency to her requests. Sighing, he pushed away from the computer and followed his mother's voice.

Downstairs, Thomas and Greg were at the table; father with a newspaper, son with a coloring book. Mom was in the doorway, dressed for work with the car keys in one hand and a manila folder in the other.

"I need to help Grandpa with a funeral real quick," she said. "Would you drive me to the cemetery, _por favor_?"

Wirt pursed his lips. His family had only moved to this town a couple years ago, but Grandpa and his funeral home had been here his whole life. Maybe he knew something about Beatrice Mills.

"Yeah," he said, taking the keys. "I want to talk to Grandpa about something anyway."

It was a good thing Wirt had gotten his driver's license a couple weeks ago - Mom didn't like driving, so she had never gotten her license. The town was small, so she usually was fine just walking; when she absolutely needed a ride, Thomas could drive. But Wirt liked driving, which added an extra layer of convenience.

Not to mention it had proved useful at John Crops' place.

Wirt got in the car, turned the keys in the ignition, and firmly resolved not to have any flashback hallucinations of giant crows. A metal car would be much harder to fix than a vegetable one.

At the cemetery, Mom thanked him for the ride and made a beeline for a group of people under a plastic canopy. Wirt started to follow her, but then hung back, leaning against the car. Grandpa was busy right now. He'd have to wait until after the funeral to ask him anything.

 _Might as well wander around while I wait._

It was a little weird for him to be back in the graveyard so soon after Halloween. Fortunately there was nothing here now to send his nerves all psycho and prompt him to jump over the wall.

He meandered over to the stone angel Sara and Jason Funderberker had sat under that night. The name etched on the gravestone belonged to an old relative of one of his classmates, no doubt - nearly everyone living here had been here forever.

That was another thing that felt weird to him about this cemetery: he didn't know anyone who was buried here. The only dead person he even remotely knew was his dad, and he was buried in Japan.

Probably.

Wirt glanced across the graveyard to the funeral. Then he looked down at the ground and leaned against the angel.

In all honesty, he didn't know exactly where his father was buried. He knew next to nothing about the man. Sure, he knew his name, and the basic story of how he and Mom met - she was a missionary from Utah, he was a cop from Tokyo, they fell in love, she came back to Japan after her mission ended and they got married, he passed away a few months before Wirt was born. But Mom never said anything about how he died or what he was like or why she didn't keep any pictures of him.

He had clues, of course. The times when Mom would look at something Wirt did for school and sigh and get a distant look in her eyes. The times she would laugh at how different her sons were and say each took after his father. The times she would ruffle his hair a certain way and then give a sad little smile.

There was one moment in particular that always stood out in his memory - one moment that, for no real reason, felt like a major tie to his dad. It was when he was about five years old, living in California with his mom - just the two of them together - shortly before they moved to Florida and she met Thomas. He remembered running off the bus when he got home from school, excited to show her a picture he'd drawn, and immediately being lifted into a teary bear hug as soon as he came through the door. When he asked her what was going on, she just said she'd received some very good news.

"You're safe now. You're safe now," she had sobbed into his hair. "Your daddy's okay now. You're safe."

It was a strange little moment that his mom never really explained. He'd never felt like it was ever the right moment to ask about it.

"So you wanted to talk to me?"

Wirt yelped and jumped. For an older fella, his grandfather had a knack for stealth.

"Why do you have to sneak up on me like that all the time?" Wirt accused, brushing off his sweater.

Grandpa chuckled. It was a raspy but hearty chuckle, the exact sound you'd expect from a cheerful, portly funeral director with thinning gray hair and glasses. "You're too easy to sneak up on. Always lost in a daydream. So what's on your mind today?"

 _Forget about Dad. He's long gone._

 _Beatrice...might not be._

He exhaled. "Do you happen to know anything about someone named Beatrice Mills?"

Grandpa furrowed his brow and rubbed his jaw, thinking. "Mills...I remember doing funerals for a few Millses around Christmas last year. Big family. Sad story."

 _Big family._

 _How many bluebirds were huddled around me in that tree? Ten? Fifteen?_

 _Wait...if he did funerals for them, does that mean…_

"W-what kind of sad story?" he asked hesitantly.

"Well, there was a car accident," Grandpa sighed. He absent-mindedly ran his hand along the top of the gravestone beside him. "A bad one. Snowstorm, icy roads, dark night - too many kids packed into too small a car. Some of them were killed on impact. The rest were taken to the hospital, but none of them lasted longer than a few days."

 _But - they can't be dead. I saw them. I spoke to Beatrice's mother -_

 _Maybe it's a different Mills family. It's a pretty common last name, right?_

"I saw a girl named Beatrice Mills in the hospital yesterday," Wirt said. "She was in a coma, but she wasn't dead. She must've been a different Mills, right?"

Grandpa raised an eyebrow. "Was she a redhead?"

Wirt nodded.

"Same Mills. The whole family's ginger." Grandpa shrugged. "But it's entirely possible she's staying alive this long. Good for her. She might even stick around. But, of course, in the end, we all go the way of old - " he glanced at the gravestone he was leaning on - "Quincy Endicott here."

Wirt's heart fumbled a little.

"Quincy Endicott?"

Grandpa tapped the grave. "That's what it says. He's been here much longer than I have, though."

 _It's a different Mills, it's a different Quincy Endicott -_

 _It can't be a different Mills. Grandpa knows what he's talking about. And it can't be a different Beatrice - I was the one who clipped her wings just before we went home, I saw her real form - that was definitely my Beatrice in the hospital._

 _Besides, how many Quincy Endicotts could there possibly be?_

 _But does that mean -_

"Do you know what his story was?" he asked, both anticipating and dreading the answer.

"Hmm, that one's more of a ghost story. According to town legend, he had this big old mansion that he believed was haunted. He was always ranting and raving about a beautiful ghost that he'd fallen in love with - everyone thought he was completely mad. Eventually it led him to hang himself, and when poor Miss Marguerite Grey - " he tapped the grave on the other side of him - "found his body, she promptly died of fright."

 _They're all dead._

Skeletons wearing pumpkins. The Highwayman drawing his finger across his throat. Waking up in the hospital.

Wirt leaned more heavily against the stone angel, then sank to the ground.

 _How could I have not realized it before?_

"Wirt? Hey, are you okay?"

His grandfather's voice floated away on the air, barely reaching Wirt's ears. Wirt buried his hands in his hair, his mind spinning.

 _They're dead. They're all dead._

 _"I'd fallen in love...with a ghost."_

 _That's why they all seemed to be from different time periods. That's why Pottsfield was full of skeletons. That's why nobody ever ate anything, that's why when we got home we were in the hospital - we were dead -_

 _But we came back. We found the way home._

 _Beatrice isn't dead yet._

"Hey, what's wrong?" Grandpa bent and put a hand on Wirt's shoulder. "Did I spook you too bad with that story or something?"

Wirt looked up.

Then he stood and ran toward the car.

"I need to talk to Greg," he called back at his grandfather. "Tell Mom she can walk home. Or, you can give her a ride. Bye!"


End file.
